Employee records herself getting laid off: 'I just bought a house'. Video

Chloe Shih was among the 170 employees laid off by Discord earlier this week. (Image credit: @colorsofchloe/X)

A Discord employee has recently shared a video in which the company announced that it would be laying off 170 employees. Chloe Shih, a product lead at the company, recorded the moment she realised she too was among the employees fired.

Discord, the popular messaging service widely used by gamers, had declared earlier this week that they would be laying off 17 percent of their workforce. After a virtual meeting, the employees were told that they would get to know in an email whether they had been impacted by the job cuts.

Shih, who had worked with the company for a little over two years, received the email.

"Dear Choe, it is with heavy hearts that we inform you that your role has been impacted by our company-wide reduction-in-force, and your employment with Discord is ending," the email from HR read with details of her last working day.

Sharing the video on X, Shih said the experience was like a break-up over text. "I just bought a house too!" she mentioned in the clip.

end of an era @discord #layoffs #Techlayoffs pic.twitter.com/3jxIYitx8T

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— chloe shih (@colorsofchloe) January 12, 2024

"Got the news this morning that I’m part of the 17 percent that got laid off. Definitely had anxiety nightmares in December about this and braced myself for impact, but I seriously did not anticipate the emotional rollercoaster I’d go through," Shih mentioned in a post on LinkedIn. " this is traumatic, but it’s also not a reflection of our work, merit, and value. In fact, some of the most GOAT’d (greatest of all times) people at Discord also got laid off across all functions."

While processing the layoff, Shih has also enrolled in design classes at an art college and is also looking for job opportunities.

Meanwhile, explaining the job cuts, Discord CEO Jason Citron said the company over-hired over the last few years.

“We grew quickly and expanded our workforce even faster, increasing by 5x since 2020,” Citron wrote in his memo to employees. “As a result, we took on more projects and became less efficient in how we operated.”

These layoffs add to the others that continue to sweep across the tech industry, including those at Google and Amazon earlier this week.

Read more: Employee records herself getting fired, CEO says video is ‘painful’ to watch